A Man of Affairs

A big guy discovers he's not a phony and gets the girl

With an interesting foreshadowing of the more contemporary business world there is a threatened hostile takeover of a family business as the center of the story. There are a couple of deaths. Conveniently they move the plot along. Unpredictable enough to keep the readers interest. The story ends with an interlude in Cuernevaca. MacDonald lived there from time to time.
Cigarette smoking comes up a lot. Paints an interesting picture of life in the fifties.

This one was a little unusual compared to most of the John D. MacDonald novels I have read so far as it is a straight dramatic story with no crime element.

The story's narrator, Sam Glidden, is a business man who gets involved with a group of corporate raiders who try to take over the company he works for. He travels to an island retreat where the raiders have invited a few stock holders with the intent of wining and dining them in order wrest control of the company and bleed it dry. There is a very long introduction where we are introduced to a lot of characters, with John D. taking the time to point out the manliness of the manly men and the sexiness of the sexy ladies. Sam then wrestles with his conscious as he is offered the show more opportunity to join the raiders and betray his company/hometown.

I actually found the drama pretty engaging. There was a decent amount of action for this type of tale--some fist fights and a spear-fishing incident provide some grit. The corporate drama was interesting on its own, though.

We do get a good dose of John D.'s rather tired romantic and sexual story-telling: of course the hero not only starts out with romantic intentions for one woman but he has sex with another before his lover manages to 'explain things' to the romantic interest, who basically congratulates Sam on his score and forgives him. Two characters fall in love after only knowing each other a few days and we get their visions of their future--the man working hard to provide and the woman having lots of babies. I wish John D. didn't have to insert this kind of trifle in so many of his books. Seriously, just have the characters meet, flirty, develop an attraction and show them walking off into the sunset at the end. Do they have to declare their love and proclaim their baby-making future every damn time?

Still, in the end it was an enjoyable read--check it out if you want to see the author tackle and non-crime story line with his usual style of solid but flawed storytelling. show less

I need a new tag for this book. It's not a mystery, and there's only a modicum of suspense. What it really is is a 175-page commentary on corporate raiders circa 1957, when it was first published. The thing is, though, the commentary isn't dated at all. You can see T. Boone Pickens, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, or the Enron gang as substitutes for the principal villain in this book without stretching your imagination at all.

The story revolves around a corporate shark's attempt to take over a publicly-traded but closely-held manufacturing firm. One of the firm's rising executives is trying to block the takeover, expecting that the company will be gutted and sold after the stock price has been manipulated upwards. The raider has brought the show more principal shareholders and the exec to the Bahamas for a wine-and-dine weekend, hoping to persuade them all to sign proxies over to him. Tragedy follows, including a barracuda attack which kills one of the stockholders.

The story is a good moral tale fraught with questions about loyalty and self-valuation. show less

Here is the beginnings of Travis McGee in the early 1950s. His name here is Sam Glidden. He is 6'4" tall, 245, 32, and bronzed, wirey, and cutesy smart. Hm. Sound familiar? his is not one of JDM's more popular novels and I don't know why. Only reason I gave it a 4 and 1/2 rather than five is because of its Hollywood ending. MacDonald's only flaw.